Francis James Child

“ Akin pulls up the highest tree in the wood and builds a bower, invisible to passers-by, for their habitation. B, which recognizes no influence of enchantment upon the lady's will, as found in A, and no prepossession on her part, as in C, makes Hind Etin pull up the biggest tree in the forest as well, but it is to scoop out a cave many fathoms deep, in which he confines Margaret till she comes to terms, and consents to go home with him, wherever that may be. ”

“ She has lived ten years in a stone cave, and has never had a churching. The eldest boy suggests that they shall all go to some church: they be christened and she be churched. This is accomplished without any difficulty, and, as the tale stands, we can only wonder that it had not been attempted before.
The etin of the Scottish story is in Norse and German a dwarf-king, elf-king, hill-king, or even a merman. The ballad is still sung in Scandinavia and Germany, but only the Danes have versions taken down before the present century. ”

“ The king now asks Akin to dine with him, and there appears to have been a family dinner. While this is going on the boy expresses a wish to be christened, "to get christendoun;" in all his eight years he had never been in a church. The king promises that he shall go that very day with his mother, and all seven of the boys seem to have got their christendoun; and so, we may hope, did Hind Etin, who was, if possible, more in want of it than they; B 15, 19.
In this story A and B pretty nearly agree. C has nothing of the restoration of the lady to her parents and home. ”

“ The mother retorts that other women do not suffer from their industry; that mead is brown, and milk is white. Hereupon the daughter reveals that she has been beguiled by an elf, and, though living under her mother's roof, has had eight or nine children (seven or eight sons and a daughter; fifteen children, Färöe A, B) , none of whom she ever saw, since after birth they were always transferred to the hill (see, especially, Danish C, G, also A; Norwegian H, I; Färöe A, B) . ”

“ He promises red gold and chestfuls of pence; and one Sunday morning Margaret, who has set out to go to church, is made—by magical operations, of course—to take the way to the hill.
A second form begins a stage later: Danish C, G, K, Swedish D, E, K, Norwegian A, C, E, G, H, I (?) , K, L, M (?) N (?) , Färöe A, B. We learn nothing of the device by which the maid has been entrapped. Mother and daughter are sitting in their bower, and the mother asks her child why her cheeks are pale, why milk is running from her breasts. She answers that she has been working too hard ”

“ Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 287; Motherwell's MS., p. 450.
1 'O well like I to ride in a mist,
And shoot in a northern win,
And far better a lady to steal,
That's come of a noble kin.'
2 Four an twenty fair ladies
Put on this lady's sheen,
And as mony young gentlemen
Did lead her ower the green. ”

“ It is scarcely necessary to remark that this ballad, like too many others, has suffered severely by the accidents of tradition. A has been not simply damaged by passing through low mouths, but has been worked over by low hands. Something considerable has been lost from the story, and fine romantic features, preserved in Norse and German ballads, have been quite effaced. ”

“ A Slovenian ballad has the story with modifications, Achacel and Korytko, Slovénşke Péşmi krajnskiga Naróda, I, 30, [11] 'Povodnji mósh;' given in abstract by Haupt and Schmaler, I, 339, note to No. 34. Mizika goes to a dance, in spite of her mother's forbidding. Her mother, in a rage, wishes that the merman may fetch her. A young man who dances with her whirls her round so furiously that she complains, but he becomes still more violent. Mizika sees how it is, and exclaims, The merman has come for me! The merman flies out of the window with her, and plunges into the water. ”

“ In the hill were my maiden-garments shorn.'
↑ For reasons, doubtless sufficient, but to me unknown, Grundtvig has not noticed two copies in Boisen's Nye og gamle Viser, 10th edition, p. 192, p. 194. The former of these is like 'A', with more resemblance here and there to other versions, and may be a made-up copy; the other, 'Agnete og Bjærgmanden, fra Sønderjylland,' consists of stanzas 1–5 of 'C'. ↑ See five versions in Mittler, Nos 546–550. As Grundtvig remarks, what is one ballad in Wendish is two in German and three in Norse: D. g. ”

“ C, rewritten, occurs in J. M. Moe og Ivar Mortensen's Norske Fornkvæde og Folkevisur, p. 16. Mixed forms, in which the ballad proper is blended with another, Landstad, No 43 = Swedish, Arwidsson, No 145; eight, communicated by Bugge, Grundtvig, III, 810–13; two others, IV, 483 f. [4]
Färöe. A, B, Grundtvig, IV, 803 f.
Icelandic. 'Rika álfs kvæði,' Íslenzk fornkvæði, No 4.
Danish A, one of the three sixteenth-century versions, tells how a knight, expressing a strong desire to obtain a king's daughter, is overheard by a dwarf, who says this shall never be. ”

“ Swedish A by Stephens, Foreign Quarterly Review, XXV, 35; Swedish C by Keightley, Fairy Mythology, p. 103. 'Agnes and the Merman,' Danish A, C, by Prior, III, 332, 335; some copy of A by Borrow, p. 120; Øhlenschlæger's ballad by Buchanan, p. 76.
Scottish B is translated, after Allingham, by Knortz, Lieder u. Romanzen, No 30; A 1–8, C 6–14, by Rosa Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder, No 2; a compounded version by Roberts into German by Podhorszki, Acta Comparationis, etc., VIII, 69–73.
A
Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 6 ”